Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Generali, Florence
The Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Generali is a building in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy. It was designed in the Neo-Renaissance style in 1871 and is one of the few purpose built commercial buildings in the centre of the city; the site was occupied by the "Pisan Loggia" and the "Chiese de Santa Cecilia" While the architecture of the palazzo is undoubtedly inspired by that of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence, the Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Generali was never intended to be a private house but the local headquarters of the General Insurance Company, founded in Trieste in 1831. There are other Palazzi delle Assicurazioni Generali in other Italian cities most notably Rome and Milan. During the latter half of the 19th century the Assicurazioni Generali were expanding not only in Italy but throughout Europe; the Assicurazioni Generali employed retrospective architectural style to reflect the surroundings of their offices in Rome the palazzo imitates the Palazzo Venezia which it faces, while in Milan the Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Generali is in a form of 19th century Baroque known as Beaux Arts.
The Florence Palazzo delle Assicurazioni unsuccessfully vies for dominance in the piazza with the more historical and architecturally important Palazzo Signoria, today known as the Palazzo Vecchio. In spite of its height and size the architecture of the Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Generali harmonises with that of the surrounding buildings, does not appear as a new imposter in the piazza. However, this is not a view shared by all, one source describes those buildings of Piazza della Signoria occupied by banks and Insurance companies as "seeming to belong to some cold northern climate rather than to the city that gave birth to the colour and vitality of the Renaissance" Part of the ground floor is home to one of Florence's more fashionable and historical cafés – "Rivoire", founded in 1872. Florence Monuments, Piazza della Signoria Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Generali, Milano The Generali Group Lord, Maria. Insight City Guide, Florence. Singapore: APA Publications
Venice
Venice is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is situated on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges; the islands are located in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay that lies between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers. In 2018, 260,897 people resided in the Comune di Venezia, of whom around 55,000 live in the historical city of Venice. Together with Padua and Treviso, the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, considered a statistical metropolitan area, with a total population of 2.6 million. The name is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century BC; the city was the capital of the Republic of Venice. The 697–1797 Republic of Venice was a major financial and maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, a staging area for the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto, as well as an important center of commerce and art in the 13th century up to the end of the 17th century.
The city-state of Venice is considered to have been the first real international financial center, emerging in the 9th century and reaching its greatest prominence in the 14th century. This made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history. After the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the Republic was annexed by the Austrian Empire, until it became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866, following a referendum held as a result of the Third Italian War of Independence. Venice has been known as "La Dominante", "La Serenissima", "Queen of the Adriatic", "City of Water", "City of Masks", "City of Bridges", "The Floating City", "City of Canals"; the lagoon and a part of the city are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Parts of Venice are renowned for the beauty of their settings, their architecture, artwork. Venice is known for several important artistic movements—especially during the Renaissance period—has played an important role in the history of symphonic and operatic music, is the birthplace of Antonio Vivaldi.
Although the city is facing some major challenges, Venice remains a popular tourist destination, an iconic Italian city, has been ranked the most beautiful city in the world. The name of the city, deriving from Latin forms Venetia and Venetiae, is most taken from "Venetia et Histria", the Roman name of Regio X of Roman Italy, but applied to the coastal part of the region that remained under Roman Empire outside of Gothic and Frankish control; the name Venetia, derives from the Roman name for the people known as the Veneti, called by the Greeks Enetoi. The meaning of the word is uncertain, although there are other Indo-European tribes with similar-sounding names, such as the Celtic Veneti and the Slavic Vistula Veneti. Linguists suggest that the name is based on an Indo-European root *wen, so that *wenetoi would mean "beloved", "lovable", or "friendly". A connection with the Latin word venetus, meaning the color'sea-blue', is possible. Supposed connections of Venetia with the Latin verb venire, such as Marin Sanudo's veni etiam, the supposed cry of the first refugees to the Venetian lagoon from the mainland, or with venia are fanciful.
The alternative obsolete form is Vinegia. Although no surviving historical records deal directly with the founding of Venice and the available evidence have led several historians to agree that the original population of Venice consisted of refugees—from nearby Roman cities such as Padua, Treviso and Concordia, as well as from the undefended countryside—who were fleeing successive waves of Germanic and Hun invasions; this is further supported by the documentation on the so-called "apostolic families", the twelve founding families of Venice who elected the first doge, who in most cases trace their lineage back to Roman families. Some late Roman sources reveal the existence of fishermen, on the islands in the original marshy lagoons, who were referred to as incolae lacunae; the traditional founding is identified with the dedication of the first church, that of San Giacomo on the islet of Rialto —said to have taken place at the stroke of noon on 25 March 421. Beginning as early as AD 166–168, the Quadi and Marcomanni destroyed the main Roman town in the area, present-day Oderzo.
This part of Roman Italy was again overrun in the early 5th century by the Visigoths and, some 50 years by the Huns led by Attila. The last and most enduring immigration into the north of the Italian peninsula, that of the Lombards in 568, left the Eastern Roman Empire only a small strip of coastline in the current Veneto, including Venice; the Roman/Byzantine territory was organized as the Exarchate of Ravenna, administered from that ancient port and overseen by a viceroy appointed by the Emperor in Constantinople. Ravenna and Venice were connected only by sea routes, with the Venetians' isolated position came increasing autonomy. New ports were built, including those at Torcello in the Venetian lagoon; the tribuni maiores formed the earliest central standing governing committee of the islands in the lagoon, dating from c. 568. The traditional first doge of Venice, Paolo Lucio A
Lion of Saint Mark
The Lion of Saint Mark, representing the evangelist St Mark, pictured in the form of a winged lion holding a Bible, is the symbol of the city of Venice and of the Venetian Republic. It is found in the symbol of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, it appears in military naval flags of the Italian Republic. The Lion of Saint Mark is the symbol of the award of the Venice Film Festival, the "Golden Lion", of the insurance company Assicurazioni Generali. St Mark, represented as a lion, is derived from Mark’s description of John the Baptist as "... The voice of the one who cries in the wilderness: Prepare Ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.", which artists compared to a roaring lion. The wings come from Ezekiel 1:10 and the application of the prophet’s vision of four winged creatures to the evangelists; these appear again in Revelation 4:7. A second connection of St. Mark and lions comes from a tale recounted by Severus Ebn-El-Mokafa: "Once a lion and lioness appeared to John Mark and his father Arostalis while they were traveling in Jordan.
The father was scared and begged his son to escape, while he awaited his fate. John Mark began to pray; the two beasts fell dead and as a result of this miracle, the father believed in Christ."In some depictions the lion rests his front paws on the ground in cities with rivers or in ones close to water, indicating the Venetian balanced power on land and sea. Venetian tradition states that when St. Mark was traveling through Europe, he arrived at a lagoon in Venice, where an angel appeared to him and said "Pax tibi Marce, evangelista meus. Hic requiescet corpus tuum." This tradition was used as justification by Rustico da Torcello and Bon da Malamocco in 828 for stealing the remains of St. Mark from his grave in Alexandria, moving them to Venice, where they were interred in the Basilica of St. Mark. A fifteen-foot bronze statue of a lion stands atop a column of Egyptian granite in St Mark’s Square, it was brought to the lagoon during the 12th century, remained there until Napoleon moved it to Paris.
Returned in 1815, it was rebuilt. It was moved from its pedestal only at the end of the 1800s for restoration and during the Second World War for safekeeping; the Lion underwent careful restoration work in the 1990s. Restorers believe its body is 2,300 years old. There are lions carved in relief on the façade of the Doge's Palace, at the Scuola Grande di San Marco The Coat of Arms of Pope John Paul I contains the Lion of St. Mark in recognition of his previous position as Patriarch of Venice. St. Mark's lion, symbolising the Republic of Venice appears on the ensign of the Italian Navy, where it does not hold the gospel in its paw but wields a sword instead: such an image is consistent with the pictorial tradition from Venetian history, in which the book is shown open during peacetime and closed during wartime; the Venetian lion appears in two distinct forms. One is as a winged animal resting on water, to symbolise dominance over the seas, holding St. Mark’s Gospel under a front paw. You can see these mighty animals all round the Mediterranean on top of a classical stone column.
The other form is known in the form of a crab. Here the lion is depicted full-faced with its wings circled around the head resembling the claws of a crustacean, it is emerging from water, so that the lion “in moleca” is associated with the lagoon and the city, whereas the standing winged lion is thought to be more associated with Venetian territory around the Mediterranean. Other elements included in depictions of the lion include a halo over his head, a book, or a sword in its paws
Trieste
Trieste is a city and a seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of Italian territory lying between the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia, which lies immediately south and east of the city, it is located near Croatia some further 30 kilometres south. Trieste is located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste and throughout history it has been influenced by its location at the crossroads of Latin and Germanic cultures. In 2018, it had a population of about 205,000 and it is the capital of the autonomous region Friuli-Venezia Giulia; the metropolitan population of Trieste is 410,000, with the city comprising about 240,000 inhabitants. Trieste was one of the oldest parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, belonging to it from 1382 until 1918. In the 19th century the monarchy was one of the Great Powers of Europe and Trieste was its most important seaport; as a prosperous seaport in the Mediterranean region, Trieste became the fourth largest city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the fin de siècle period at the end of the 19th century it emerged as an important hub for literature and music.
Trieste underwent an economic revival during the 1930s, Trieste was an important spot in the struggle between the Eastern and Western blocs after the Second World War. The original pre-Roman name of the city, with the -est- suffix typical of Illyrian, is speculated to be derived from a hypothetical Venetic word *terg- "market", etymologically related to Old Church Slavonic tьrgъ "market". Roman authors transliterated the name as Tergestum. Modern names of the city include: Italian: Trieste, Slovene: Trst, German: Triest, Hungarian: Trieszt, Croatian: Trst, Serbian: Трст/Trst, Greek: Τεργέστη/Tergesti and Czech: Terst. Trieste lies in the northernmost part of the high Adriatic in northeastern Italy, near the border with Slovenia; the city lies on the Gulf of Trieste. Built on a hillside that becomes a mountain, Trieste's urban territory lies at the foot of an imposing escarpment that comes down abruptly from the Karst Plateau towards the sea; the karst landforms close to the city reach an elevation of 458 metres above sea level.
It lies on the borders of the Italian geographical region, the Balkan Peninsula, the Mitteleuropa. The territory of Trieste is composed of several different climate zones depending on the distance from the sea and elevation; the average temperatures are 24.1 °C in July. The climatic setting of the city is humid subtropical climate. On average, humidity levels are pleasantly low, while only two months receive less than 60 mm of precipitation. Trieste along with the Istrian peninsula has evenly distributed rainfall above 1,000 mm in total. Snow occurs on average 0 – 2 days per year. Temperatures are mild—lows below zero are somewhat rare and highs above 30 °C aren't as common as in other parts of Italy. Winter maxima are lower than with quite high minima. Two basic weather patterns interchange—sunny, sometimes windy but very cold days connected to an occurrence of northeast wind called Bora as well as rainy days with temperatures about 6 to 11 °C. Summer is warm with maxima about 28 °C and lows above 20 °C, with the hot nights being influenced by the warm sea water.
The absolute maximum of the last 30 years is 38.0 °C in 2003, whereas the absolute minimum is −7.9 °C in 1996. The Trieste area is divided into 8a–10a zones according to USDA hardiness zoning; the climate can be affected by the Bora, a dry and cool north-to-northeast katabatic wind that can last for some days and reach speeds of up to 140 km/h on the piers of the port, thus sometimes bringing subzero temperatures to the entire city. Trieste is administratively divided in seven districts: Altipiano Ovest: Borgo San Nazario · Contovello · Prosecco · Santa Croce Altipiano Est: Banne · Basovizza · Gropada · Opicina · Padriciano · Trebiciano Barcola · Cologna · Conconello · Gretta · Grignano · Guardiella · Miramare · Roiano · Scorcola Barriera Nuova · Borgo Giuseppino · Borgo Teresiano · Città Nuova · Città Vecchia · San Vito · San Giusto · Campi Elisi · Sant'Andrea · Cavana Barriera Vecchia · San Giacomo · Santa Maria Maddalena Superiore Cattinara · Chiadino · San Luigi · Guardiella · Longera · San Giovanni · Rozzol · Melara Chiarbola · Coloncovez · Santa Maria Maddalena Inferiore · Raute · Santa Maria Maddalena Superiore · Servola · Poggi Paese · Poggi Sant'Anna · Valmaura · Altura · Borgo San SergioThe iconic city center is Piazza Unità d'Italia, between the large 19th-century avenues and the old medieval city, composed of many narrow and crooked streets.
Since the second millennium BC, the location was an inhabited site. An Illy
Chief executive officer
The chief executive officer or just chief executive, is the most senior corporate, executive, or administrative officer in charge of managing an organization – an independent legal entity such as a company or nonprofit institution. CEOs lead a range of organizations, including public and private corporations, non-profit organizations and some government organizations; the CEO of a corporation or company reports to the board of directors and is charged with maximizing the value of the entity, which may include maximizing the share price, market share, revenues or another element. In the non-profit and government sector, CEOs aim at achieving outcomes related to the organization's mission, such as reducing poverty, increasing literacy, etc. In the early 21st century, top executives had technical degrees in science, engineering or law; the responsibility of an organization's CEO are set by the organization's board of directors or other authority, depending on the organization's legal structure.
They can be far-reaching or quite limited and are enshrined in a formal delegation of authority. Responsibilities include being a decision maker on strategy and other key policy issues, leader and executor; the communicator role can involve speaking to the press and the rest of the outside world, as well as to the organization's management and employees. As a leader of the company, the CEO or MD advises the board of directors, motivates employees, drives change within the organization; as a manager, the CEO/MD presides over the organization's day-to-day operations. The term refers to the person who makes all the key decisions regarding the company, which includes all sectors and fields of the business, including operations, business development, human resources, etc; the CEO of a company is not the owner of the company. In some countries, there is a dual board system with two separate boards, one executive board for the day-to-day business and one supervisory board for control purposes. In these countries, the CEO presides over the executive board and the chairman presides over the supervisory board, these two roles will always be held by different people.
This ensures a distinction between management by the executive board and governance by the supervisory board. This allows for clear lines of authority; the aim is to prevent a conflict of interest and too much power being concentrated in the hands of one person. In the United States, the board of directors is equivalent to the supervisory board, while the executive board may be known as the executive committee. In the United States, in business, the executive officers are the top officers of a corporation, the chief executive officer being the best-known type; the definition varies. In the case of a sole proprietorship, an executive officer is the sole proprietor. In the case of a partnership, an executive officer is a managing partner, senior partner, or administrative partner. In the case of a limited liability company, executive officer is any manager, or officer. A CEO has several subordinate executives, each of whom has specific functional responsibilities referred to as senior executives, executive officers or corporate officers.
Subordinate executives are given different titles in different organizations, but one common category of subordinate executive, if the CEO is the president, is the vice-president. An organization may have more than one vice-president, each tasked with a different area of responsibility; some organizations have subordinate executive officers who have the word chief in their job title, such as chief operating officer, chief financial officer and chief technology officer. The public relations-focused position of chief reputation officer is sometimes included as one such subordinate executive officer, but, as suggested by Anthony Johndrow, CEO of Reputation Economy Advisors, it can be seen as "simply another way to add emphasis to the role of a modern-day CEO – where they are both the external face of, the driving force behind, an organisation culture". In the US, the term chief executive officer is used in business, whereas the term executive director is used in the not-for-profit sector; these terms are mutually exclusive and refer to distinct legal duties and responsibilities.
Implicit in the use of these titles, is that the public not be misled and the general standard regarding their use be applied. In the UK, chief executive and chief executive officer are used in both business and the charitable sector; as of 2013, the use of the term director for senior charity staff is deprecated to avoid confusion with the legal duties and responsibilities associated with being a charity director or trustee, which are non-executive roles. In the United Kingdom, the term director is used instead of chief officer". Business publicists since the days of Edward Bernays and his client John D. Rockefeller and more the corporate publicists for Henry Ford, promoted the concept of the "celebrity CEO". Business journalists have adopted this approach, which assumes that the corporate achievements in the arena of manufacturing, wer
Royal Bank of Canada
The Royal Bank of Canada is a Canadian multinational financial services company and the largest bank in Canada by market capitalization. The bank has 80,000 employees worldwide; the bank was founded in 1864 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, while its corporate headquarters are located in Toronto, in Montreal, Quebec. RBC's Institution Number is 003. In November 2017, RBC was added to the Financial Stability Board's list of global systemically important banks. In Canada, the bank's personal and commercial banking operations are branded as RBC Royal Bank in English and RBC Banque Royale in French and serves ten million clients through its network of 1,209 branches. RBC Bank is the U. S. banking subsidiary which operated 439 branches across six states in the Southeastern United States, but now only offers cross-border banking services to Canadian travellers and expats. RBC has 127 branches across seventeen countries in the Caribbean, which serve more than 16 million clients. RBC Capital Markets is RBC's worldwide investment and corporate banking subsidiary, while the investment brokerage firm is known as RBC Dominion Securities.
Investment banking services are provided through RBC Bank and the focus is on middle market clients. In 2011, RBC was the largest Canadian company by market capitalization, and was ranked at No. 50 in the 2013 Forbes Global 2000 listing, The company has operations in Canada, 40 other countries and had US$673.2 billion of assets under management in 2014. In 1864, the Merchants Bank of Halifax was founded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as a commercial bank that financed the fishing and timber industries and the European and Caribbean import/export businesses. By 1869 the Merchants' Bank was incorporated and received its federal charter in the same year. During the 1870s and 1880s, the bank expanded into the other Maritime Provinces; when both the Newfoundland Commercial Bank and Union Bank of Newfoundland collapsed on 10 December 1894, the Merchants Bank expanded to Newfoundland on 31 January 1895. As the bank grew, executives changed its name to reflect its growth and western expansion. In 1901, the Merchants Bank of Halifax changed its name to the Royal Bank of Canada.
The centre of the Canadian financial industry had moved from Halifax to Montreal, so the Merchants Bank relocated its head office there. In 1910, RBC merged with the Union Bank of Halifax. In the same year it built a bank branch in Winnipeg, Manitoba—designed by Carrère and Hastings, in beaux-arts classicism proclaiming the financial dominance of Winnipeg in the prairies. To improve its position in Ontario, RBC merged with Traders Bank of Canada in 1912 and in 1917 RBC merged with Quebec Bank, founded in 1818 and chartered in 1822 in Quebec City. RBC's presence in Manitoba and Saskatchewan was strengthened through a 1918 merger with Northern Crown Bank, the result of the merger in 1908 between Northern Bank and Crown Bank of Canada, based in Ontario. RBC's presence in the Prairie Provinces grew again with the 1925 merger with the Union Bank of Canada, which had begun in Quebec City in 1865 as the Union Bank of Lower Canada, but changed its name in 1886; the Union Bank of Canada had moved its headquarters to Winnipeg in 1912, had built a strong presence in the Prairies and opened the first bank in the Northwest Territories at Fort Smith in 1921.
In 1935, RBC merged with Crown Savings and Loan Co. merged with Industrial Trust Co.. RBC installed its first computer in the first in Canadian banking. In the 1960s, RBC Insurance was created. In 1968, it merged with Debenture Company. In 1993, RBC merged with Royal Trust. In 1998, RBC acquired Security First Network Bank in Atlanta—the first pure Internet bank. In 2000, RBC merged merchant credit/debit card acquiring business with BMO Bank of Montreal's to form Moneris Solutions. In 2013, RBC completed the acquisition of the Canadian subsidiary of Ally Financial. RBC Insurance is the largest Canadian bank-owned insurance organization, with services to over five million people, it provides life, travel and auto and reinsurance products as well as creditor and business insurance services. 1882 – Merchants Bank of Halifax opened an office in Bermuda. 1899 – RBC opened an agency in New York City and a branch in Havana. 1903 – RBC bought Banco de Oriente de Santiago de Cuba. By the mid-1920s, RBC is the largest bank in the country.
1904 – RBC bought Banco del Commercio de Havana. 1907 – RBC opened a branch in San Juan, Puerto Rico. 1909 – RBC established a branch in Nassau, Bahamas. 1910 – RBC opened a branch in London and acquired branches in Puerto Rico and Port of Spain, Trinidad as a result of its acquisition of Union Bank of Halifax. 1911 – RBC opened an agency in New York City, branches in Bridgetown and Kingston, Jamaica. 1912 – RBC bought Bank of British Honduras in British Honduras, which it converted to a branch. RBC opened a branch in the Dominican Republic. 1914 – RBC bought out Bank of British Guiana, in British Guiana, converted it to a branch. 1915 – RBC opened branches in Costa Rica, Dominica, St. Kitts. 1916 – RBC opened a branch in Venezuela. 1917 – RBC opened branches in Antigua, Dominica, St. Kitts, Montserrat and Tobago. 1918 – RBC opened a branch in Barcelona, another in Vladivostok that lasted less than a year. 1919 – RBC opened branches in Brazil, Uruguay, Martinique and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. 1920
Districts of Israel
There are six main administrative districts of Israel, known in Hebrew as mehozot and Arabic as mintaqah and fifteen sub-districts known as nafot. Each sub-district is further divided into cities and regional councils it contains; the figures in this article are based on numbers from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics and so include all places under Israeli civilian rule including those Israeli-occupied territories where this is the case. Therefore, the Golan sub-district and its four natural regions are included in the number of sub-districts and natural regions though it is not recognized by the United Nations or the international community as Israeli territory; the population figure below for the Jerusalem District was calculated including East Jerusalem whose annexation by Israel is not recognized by the United Nations and the international community. The Judea and Samaria Area, however, is not included in the number of districts and sub-districts as Israel has not applied its civilian jurisdiction in that part of the West Bank.
Jerusalem District. Population: 1,083,300 Area: 653 km2District capital: Jerusalem. Northern District. Population: 1,401,300 Area: 4,473 km2District capital: Nazareth Tzfat – population: 116,000 Kinneret – population: 114,000 Yizre'el – population: 498,100 Akko – population: 624,300 Golan – population: 48,800 Haifa District. Population: 996,300 Area: 866 km2District capital: Haifa Haifa – population: 571,100 Hadera – population: 424,100 Central District. Population: 2,115,800 Area: 1,294 km2District capital: Ramla Sharon – population: 464,500 Petah Tikva – population: 719,300 Ramla – population: 338,800 Rehovot – population: 593,300 Tel Aviv District. Population: 1,388,400 Area: 172 km2District capital: Tel Aviv Southern District. Population: 1,244,200 Area: 14,185 km2District Capital: Beersheba Ashkelon – population: 532,000 Be'er Sheva – population: 712,200Formerly Hof Aza Regional Council with a population of around 10,000 Israelis was part of this district, but the Israeli communities that constituted it were evacuated when the disengagement plan was implemented in the Gaza Strip.
Only the Coordination and Liaison Administration operates there. Judea and Samaria Area. Jewish Population: 435,159 Arab/Bedouin population: 40,000.. Largest city: Modi'in Illit The name Judea and Samaria for this geographical area is based on terminology from the Hebrew and other sources relating to ancient Israel and Judah/Judea; the territory has been under Israeli control since the 1967 Six-Day War but not annexed by Israel, pending negotiations regarding its status. It is part of historic Israel. However, it is not recognized as part of the State of Israel by most nations. Geography of Israel List of cities in Israel ISO 3166-2:IL ^ a: This district includes areas captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed to Israel in the Jerusalem Law. ^ b: Occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War and internationally unrecognized annexed by Israel's Golan Heights Law. Central Bureau of Statistics – detailed breakdown of each district, sub-district, natural region
€ 68.5 billion[1] (2017)
€ 2.1 billion[1] (2017)
Insurance companies of Italy